Norton GoBack, was formerly known as Roxio Goback, Adaptec Goback, as well as other names. Goback has been sold and transferred frequently from company to company. Currently, Norton Goback is the only competitive roll-back solution close enough to be shown on the RollBack Rx radar screen. Goback's comparison and competitiveness is limited.

GoBack Software Overview

GoBack is a Microsoft Windows based disk utility, that monitors and records up to 8.3Gb of disk changes. When the disk activity is idle, it tags these as safe checkpoints. GoBack then allows the hard drive to be restored to any of the checkpoints. It does this by effectively undoing all changes made to the disk since the checkpoint point was created. GoBack replaces the MBR Master Boot Record, and also replaces the partition table with a single partition. Because of this change to the partition table, this can cause problems when dual booting other operating systems on the same hard disk.

RollBack Rx's Snapshots vs GoBack's Buffer Space

GoBack uses a buffer space for storage of its change files using the FIFO method of storage (First In First Out). This limits the amount of data and eventually - how far back you can actually go back to restore. Thus when the buffer space becomes full, GoBack starts to delete its earlier checkpoints and storage of earlier data.

Goback's technology is based on a file level monitoring and logging technique. It needs to consume a large chunk of the hard disk space to create a history change file. The monitoring system is picking up every little bit of file changes regardless of whether or not, it is worth to know or see. A simple system restart will generate 100s of file changes to log. It really makes one wonder if more truly is better; in Goback's case, more is definitely not better. The details file change history logging consumes the hard disk space quickly, not to mention, the tremendous pressure it puts on system resources.

RollBack Rx's snapshot-based continuous backup solution delivers added security by allowing you to store the state of your PC more often, while using less drive space. Should the need arise, you could easily restore your PC to any of its unlimited number of snapshots. This could potentially be months or even years ago. These snapshots could be automated silently in fixed intervals such as 1 hour ago, or whenever the system is turned on or a particular file is executed.

Norton Goback (Symantec) vs RollBack Rx comparion chart

Norton's Goback (by Symantec) is a similar solution to our RollBack Rx. Below are some technical benefits that RollBack Rx has over Nortons Goback. We encourage users to evaluate both Rollback Rx and and Nortons Goback for an objective comparison of the two utilities.

Goback compared to RollBack Rx

Does not reserve any portion of hard disk for ?protected data?. The program data structure takes 0.07% of disk space to create up to 60,000 snapshots.

Goback Reserves a portion of hard disk as a buffer to track file changes. The buffer is about 20-30% of disk size.

Goback takes more disk space than Rollback Rx.

The time Rollback Rx takes to restore a snapshot is independent from the amount of information contained in the snapshot.

Goback takes a longer time to restore a checkpoint as more information is stored in the buffer.

GoBack takes longer to restore the computer.

Rollback Rx is a sector level program. It creates "sector maps" of the protected hard disk. It does not track every file change. The system performance is unrelated to the amount of snapshots or the data that has been created.

Goback uses a buffer to track all the file changes. When more and more information gets accumulated in the buffer, the system performance deteriorates.

Goback slows down the system as more changes are made to the system.

Rollback Rx will not take a snapshot until the user wants to create one; either via a manual snapshot or through a scheduled task.

Goback automatically creates "checkpoints" for the system regardless of whether the user wants to or not.

Goback is less flexible on creating and managing snapshots.

Rollback Rx does not use a buffer. The snapshots will always be there unless user deletes the snapshot.

With Goback, the buffer used to track file changes is a FIFO buffer (First In First Out). Let?s say the buffer size is 10GB. If a user copies a couple of DVDs, the buffer will become full. When this occurs the "last checkpoint" will be pushed out the buffer. If this happens, the user would not be able to recover any checkpoint.

You can count on Rollback Rx to be able to recover from any instances or number of files copied etc. There are no surprises. If you have created a snapshot, you know you can always get back to it.

Rollback Rx offers several deployment utilities that allow administrators to remotely and silently deploy Rollback to a network of PCs instantly with pre-set program settings.

Goback can not be remotely managed without using third party networking utilities.

Rollback Rx provides more features designed for network administrators of larger organizations.

Rollback Rx comes in two versions, standard and professional. It provides wider range of solutions for different audience.

Goback is available in a single end-user version only.

Rollback Rx is more flexible on pricing and marketing strategies.

Rollback Rx can take a snapshot of crashed system from subsystem console and then recover data from the crashed state. This essentially eliminates the ?gap of restoring system to an earlier time?. This makes Rollback ahead above Goback.

Goback does not have a subsystem console. Therefore if your system should fail to boot into the OS. There is no method of recovering your saved data.

Rollback Rx has a distinct feature that allow users to recover in case of BSOD and OS corruption. Goback, on the otherhand works as an application within the windows shell and does not have this subsystem console capability.

In addition to the system restore feature, Rollback Rx is also a strong configuration management solution. Based on its "sector mapping" architecture, users can create several independent snapshots each having different applications and data. User can switch back and forth among the snapshots for configuration management, sales demo, or software training purposes.

Goback, is a file level filtering program. It is not able to create the "absolute independent checkpoints" that user can use for configuration management purpose.

Rollback Rx is more than a system restore solution.

"I've been a Goback and RestoreIt user, but stopped because I do defrags daily. As you know, this chews up Goback's buffer and RestoreIt's also. I had to manually create more space by deleting files... Rollback RX Pro is just what the doctor order (no pun intended). Kudos to you for creating such a needed utility!" - Mel -